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In Belarus, there is a real amber fever. “Soon products from amber will arrive on store shelves”: trial amber mining has begun in the Brest region

An experiment launched by the authorities in 2016 to involve private companies in the search and development of Belarusian amber has not yet yielded results.

In 2016, the Belarusian authorities, out of economy, decided to experiment: to allow private structures to search for and develop amber deposits on the territory of the republic.

Legal grounds were introduced very quickly. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection has prepared proposals for the artisanal extraction of amber, legislators have amended the subsoil code.

So far, only one company legally deals with amber in Belarus - Belgeopoisk LLC. Registered in Minsk, received geo-removal within the Zhabinkovsky district. Brest region.

As pioneers of amber exploration, they were provided with the sweetest of the already explored - the Gatcha-Osovo deposit on the territory adjacent to the local peat plant. Under the swamp, presumably, there are at least 5-6 tons of solar stone.

The company has issued documents for the development of the site in the mode of pilot operation. It is too early to envy the pioneers. According to the statistics that they provided for the last year, they have no real results.

Meanwhile, the head of the department for geology of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Belarus, Sergei Mamchik, told Ezhednevnik that the work of Belgeopoisk will have a significant impact on the future of diligent business in Belarus.

The authorities themselves do not yet know how to develop it in practice. The technical procedure, the recommendations of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the attitude of local authorities - all this will be formed under the influence of the first experience. He will show the economy. If there is a profit, without causing damage to the environment, it is possible that amber mining will continue to develop.

Sergey Mamchik believes that if the local executive committees see a conscientious attitude to the fulfillment of obligations on the part of the miners, the possibility of obtaining additional funds for the local treasury, it will become easier to obtain permission to develop.

The next stage of the amber business will be its industrial production. It is assumed that after the completion of successful exploration work, the company will be able to apply for a mining permit. In a number of countries there are end-to-end licenses - whoever finds it develops it. In Belarus, everything is decided by local authorities.

True, the question of whether it is worth mining is also still open. There is no amber processing and processing industry in Belarus, and the low demand that exists today is fully provided by the Kaliningrad Amber Plant.

According to the representative of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the sale of amber may be promising outside of Belarus. This is not gold, not diamonds, there are no strict requirements for the export of legal amber. But one should not expect much profit from export. Sergei Mamchik believes that Belarusian amber is only in the Zhabinka region in terms of quantity and color with a large margin enough for their own amber room. On the demonstration of such a curiosity to tourists, you can earn much more than on the export of amber. In addition, amber opens up new interesting areas of application. It is used in Chinese medicine, added to fertilizers for accelerated plant growth.

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In 2016, the Belarusian authorities, out of economy, decided to experiment: to allow private structures to search for and develop amber deposits on the territory of the republic.

So far, only one company legally deals with amber in Belarus - Belgeopoisk LLC. Registered in Minsk, geo-removal received within the Zhabinkovsky district. Brest region.

Recently, there have been reports in the media about the illegal mass mining of amber in Ukraine. Since the Belarusian and Ukrainian Polissya are located in a geologically similar zone, is it possible that our country also has deposits of this sun stone?

Uranium NZ of Belarus

Alexander Pavlovsky, head of the Department of Geography at Gomel State University, confirmed that there is indeed amber in Belarus. Polesie is rich in its reserves - in the Brest region and in the Lelchitsky district of the Gomel region.

But in the Gomel region, its industrial development is not carried out - rock potash salts, oil, building crushed stone and granite, clay, glass sands are mined here, brown coal reserves have been explored.

“The bowels of the earth in our region also contain more expensive minerals. There is uranium in the Lelchitsky district. Uranium raw materials lie here in deep sandy and carbonaceous layers,” Alexander Pavlovsky told Sputnik.

In addition, according to the expert, kimberlite pipes were also found on the territory of Belarus - with signs of inclusions of diamonds.

Does this mean that "diamond" and "uranium" fever will start in Belarus in the near future? Apparently not. Both uranium and diamond raw materials lie too deep in our country.

“The deposits are explored and known, but the issue is technology. The extraction of these minerals at such a depth is unlikely to be economically justified today. Figuratively speaking, in this case, half of the Gomel region will have to be opened,” Alexander Pavlovsky explained.

So natural deposits are "hidden" until better times - when technology will make the extraction of such deep raw materials profitable.

Sun stone from the depths of Polissya

As for the Belarusian amber, the leading specialist in this field can be considered an associate professor of the Brest State University named after A.S. Pushkin, candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences, professor Maxim Bogdasarov. Maksim Albertovich admits that lately too unhealthy interest has been shown to Belarusian amber.

Indeed, both Belarusian and Ukrainian Polissya is located in the junction zone of the Ukrainian shield, the Volyn-Podolsk plate and the Pripyat trough. Millions of years ago, the Kharkov Sea flooded the land covered with coniferous vegetation in this place. Pine resin-resin fell into marine sediments, in the geochemical reducing environment of which it turned into amber. Scientists distinguish places where amber was formed in the area of beaches and the coastal strip of the most ancient sea, in the zones of shallow and deep water shelves.

Prediction of ore-bearing fields of amber in Belarus is carried out not only by drilling wells, but by a complex scientific method that analyzes a whole range of factors and features in various ways.

Jurassic Beach

Where are the placers of this valuable golden mineral located? "Beach" amber has been discovered today, for example, in the area of the village of Glushkovichi, Lelchitsky district. But it is not recommended for "black diggers" to take up a shovel - in addition to possible problems with the law, there will be a number of other difficulties. At a minimum, you will have to go 60-70 meters deep into the ground.

The Glushkovich area, like the entire "beach-coastal zone" is recognized as unpromising for the detection of amber-bearing placers. Professor Bagdasarov and his colleagues give the same forecast for the deep-water shelf zone.

The most promising for development is the shallow shelf zone, which extends into the territory of the Polesskaya saddle, the so-called lagoon-delta deposits. At a certain time, the earth's surface here sagged somewhat, and sea water penetrated into the deltas of the most ancient rivers that once flowed through Polesie. Fossil resin deposited in these sea-flooded paleo-river estuaries and lagoons lies fairly close to the surface today.

In Belarus, seven amber-bearing areas have been identified, among them - Zosintsovskaya (Lelchitskaya) and Stolinsko-Mikashevichskaya. Amber here can lie at a depth of 10 to 30 meters. But not only the depth of occurrence can be interesting in determining the prospects of these sites - but also the so-called "on-board content" of amber.

At the neighboring Glushkovichi Klessovsky field in Ukraine, it is, for example, 50 grams per cubic meter.

The main difference between Belarusian amber and deposits in Ukraine is not geological, but legal - its reserves are not yet threatened by predatory mining, which has already caused irreparable environmental damage to our neighbors.

Amber, this sunny cut stone, was popular in centuries past, and today it is experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

Where is it mined?

It used to be believed that there were no large deposits of amber in Belarus, at least that's what the exploration "canons" said. Amber should not be formed on the lands now included in the borders of this country. However, recently, in the eighties of the XX century, amber "nuggets" began to be found in the vicinity of Brest, at a former peat processing factory. Until now, both legal and "poaching" amber mining takes place there. Sometimes miners come across pieces of resin up to several kilograms in size! Deposits of sun stone have also been discovered in other swampy areas.

Illegal mining of amber in Belarus

Where could amber come from, because it is formed in completely different conditions? The answer is simple - several tons of stone were once brought to the territory of modern Belarus by a glacier. This happened in the Quaternary period.

The country's industry is gradually mastering more and more new sources of this ornamental stone. It is possible to find deposits of "more precisely, the place of precipitation" of amber of various shades - honey, lemon, even a little reddish.

Every week in the Gatcha swamp in the Brest region, miners receive up to 10 kilograms of precious stone. Scientists are not in a hurry to talk about the development prospects. It is necessary not only to assess the volume of reserves, but also to make sure of the high quality of amber.

Calculate the costs, possible profits and estimate whether the game is worth the candle. The correspondent went to the Zhabinkovsky district to watch how a sun stone of extraordinary beauty is taken out of an ordinary swamp.

Amber from the glacier

Many people talk about deposits of amber in our depths, but only a few manage to see the precious stone. Amber is on the maps of geologists, in museum expositions, in photographs posted in scientific collections. Unprocessed pieces of stone are found by archaeologists at Paleolithic sites, whose age exceeds 13 thousand years. Products made of fossilized resin, such as beads, earrings, animal figurines, scientists find in the burials of the Mesolithic era. A research student group, created at the Pushkin State Pedagogical Institute in Brest, discovered more than three dozen amber deposits back in the 80s of the last century.

Then a full-scale exploration began. Today, several sites with amber deposits are known in the Drogichinsky, Berezovsky, Pinsk, Stolin and Luninets regions. The most promising and explored in detail are deposits in the Gatcha-Osovsky swamp peat massif between Zhabinka and Kobrin. Here, at a depth of two to five meters lies about 2.5 tons of amber. However, these data are very approximate. It is difficult to accurately estimate reserves. In any case, they are small. For comparison: about 300 tons of valuable stone are mined annually at the deposits in the Kaliningrad region.

Geologist Aleksey ANISKO said that large amber nuggets are rare. The average fraction of Belarusian amber is about three centimeters.

We have Quaternary deposits of amber, and in the Kaliningrad region, as in Ukraine, there are indigenous ones, which are more than 50 million years old. What does it mean? Amber appeared on our territory thanks to the arrival of a glacier. It melted, and the stones settled in low-lying places, which turned into swamps, - explains the director of Belgeopoisk LLC Oleg Pivovarchik.

Day to day does not fall

We met with Oleg Pivovarchik outside the village of Barantsy, Zhabinka district. On the "SUV" we overcome a couple of kilometers along a washed out road. There is no further way. I change my sneakers for rubber boots, I climb into the salon of the old man GAZ-66. The driver, clutching the steering wheel, is trying to overcome the rest of the route. This is done with difficulty. GAS sneaks through deep pits, “hangs out” on embankments, kneads mud in huge ruts, and gets over a narrow gauge railway. The driver takes a breath.

We stop at a small trailer. This is a security post. The decor is simple: a video surveillance system console, a small sofa and a safe in which a week's supply of amber is stored. Guards show sealed packages ready to be shipped. The director of Belgeopoisk comments:

At this amber manifestation, we make a trial extraction of a stone. In a week we get about 10 kilograms of amber. Sometimes a little more, sometimes less. We collect the stone, seal it and send it to Minsk for examination every seven days. But it is still too early to draw any preliminary conclusions. One thing can be said: we have amber.

Headed by Oleg Pivovarchik, Belgeopoisk LLC is a young organization established under the Administration of the President in the form of a public-private partnership. It was registered last year to regulate the amber market, where illegal miners have revived. It is Belgeopoisk that conducts trial mining of amber in the Gatcha-Osovsky swamp massif.

A submersible pump delivers the rock to the screening device. The sand leaves, and everything else is moved by hand.

Now we are working on deposit number two, - continues Oleg Pivovarchik. - Its area is about 20 thousand square meters. Trial mining began in July. However, before that, we collected all the data on previous geological explorations, studied the information, and prepared project documentation. In this array, 2,500 exploration wells were drilled, and in total in Polesie - about 5,500. 22 deposits have been delineated here, 15 of them are swampy. The depth of occurrence of amber is up to three meters. Up to six in places.

Oleg Pivovarchik draws attention: amber in the Gatcha bog massif lies unevenly. Shows a map showing the content of amber. For example, in one of the wells, a ton of rock contains one and a half kilograms of valuable stone, and in the next one - only nine grams. Huge difference.

In the footsteps of the miners

With entrepreneur Pavel Baltsevich we sit in a motor boat. Pavel is from the Lida region, he is engaged in sand mining. In the Polissya swamp, he works as a contractor, but instead of sand, he extracts amber.

This is an ordinary dredger, but it had to be seriously modified, - Pavel Baltsevich leads the tour. - Its basis is an Italian submersible pump, which from a depth of 6 meters lifts the rock along the slurry pipeline and feeds it to the screening device. The sand leaves, and everything else is moved by hand. We used a variety of components from different machines, which were literally “on the knee” combined into a single mechanism.

One of the components of the dredger is an excavator. You can't do without it. The swamp is overgrown with bushes and reeds - a powerful machine is clearing a place for the pump to be immersed. Workers and specialists complain that they have to follow in the footsteps of illegal miners:

Here they work in the winter when the swamp freezes. Motor pumps are used. A powerful jet of water knocks out huge holes, light amber floats to the surface. Due to their activities, the layers are mixed in many places, which makes the work very difficult. Our pump often brings to the surface traces of illegal immigrants in these places: empty beer and vodka bottles, packs of cigarettes. Do you see a bush on a hill straight ahead? Illegals also worked there ...

Geologist Aleksey Anisko works at amber mining for the first time. New experiences are always interesting. He takes out a plastic jar, shows today's "catch". Several dozen stones of different colors, shapes and sizes. The cherry on the cake is honey-colored amber, almost the size of a palm. The largest nugget mined at Gatcha is a 100-gram handsome man. In diameter, its length reaches ten centimeters, and the cost is one thousand dollars. But such finds are rare. The average fraction of Belarusian amber is about three centimeters. However, its main advantage is by no means the size, but the color scheme:

We came across stones of various colors: honey, pomegranate, lemon. Such diversity is highly valued in the jewelry industry. We document all information obtained during the test mining process. Then it will be used to assess the prospects for the extraction of amber on an industrial scale.

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